Mark Maynard | 2011 | August

This might be your last chance to get stoned for a twisted ankle, Michigan

By Mark | August 25, 2011

An appeals court today in Michigan found that so-called medical marijuana dispensaries, like those which have popped up all around Ypsilanti during this past year, are illegal. The following clip comes from the Washington Post:

Medical marijuana cannot be sold through private shops, the Michigan appeals court said Wednesday in a major decision that strikes at businesses trying to cash in on pot and cuts off a source for people with chronic ailments.

A three-judge panel said the 2008 medical marijuana law, as well as the state’s public health code, does not allow people to sell pot to each other, even if they’re among the 99,500 who have state-issued marijuana cards.

Big Daddy’s Hydro store is shown closed in Detroit, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2011. Medical marijuana cannot be sold through private shops, the Michigan appeals court said Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2011, in a major decision that strikes at businesses trying to cash in on pot. A three-judge panel said the 2008 medical marijuana law, as well as the state’s public health code, does not allow people to sell pot to each other, even if they’re among the 99,500 who have state-issued marijuana cards.

The court said Compassionate Apothecary in Mount Pleasant, Mich., can be immediately shut down as a “public nuisance.” The 3-0 decision means local authorities can pursue similar businesses, estimated at 200 to 300, in their communities.

It was not immediately clear whether they would, but state Attorney General Bill Schuette said he’s notifying all 83 county prosecutors.

Personally, I don’t care if marijuana is legal. All things considered, hugh-fructose corn syrup is probably worse for mankind. What I do have a problem with, though, is the ridiculous charade that so-called “medical marijuana” has become. As someone who knows seriously ill individuals who rely on marijuana to deal with the pain and loss of appetite that often accompany serious disease and treatment, I find the current paradigm, in which anyone can qualify by paying a graduate of a third-rate medical school his or her fee for a 2-minute consultation consisting of leading questions about carpal tunnel, offensive in the extreme. I say we just make the shit legal for all of those over 21 and tax the hell out of it. If people want to waste their lives on pot, let them. Just don’t ask me to pretend that they’re doing it for any other reason than that they’re lazy fucks who enjoy watching television while high.

update: As with all the medical marijuana posts I’ve ever written, this one is attracting a lot of comments, many of which refer to me as a fucking douche. Here are a few of them, along with my response.

THOM ELLIOTT:
“Lazy fucks” who “waste their lives”… sounds like the utter majority of yr countrymen to me, why the spleen towards reefer smoking? I know many perfectly productive humans who smoke reefer, and so do you. How many bars are there in MI? What kind of public nuisance are they? As far as I’m concerned the mundane over consumption of alchohol and its associated public drunkenness is one of our society’s most destructive activities. How many lives has drinking destroyed? How many crimes perpetrated by drunkards? Why is it deadly, dangerous products like alchohol or socalled antidepressants get a pass, and proven nearly harmless and *gasp* healthful substance is so oppressed? You have to have a card and jump through a bunch of hoops to engage in a harmless behaviour with positive effects for most and particularly the chronically ill, and you’re encouraged to throw yr life away with booze on billboards and advertisements everywhere you look.

I just don’t get it… this charade? The people who have twisted this nation’s youth with ritalyn to make them pay attention to nonsense, or have turned a generation of adults into amphetamine or morphene addicts with adderal or darvocet? These are the people who shouldn’t participate in the charade of making a harmless substance available in abundance?? If anything it was a positive development in the course of a deeply troubled institution. Why is it people on paxil don’t need special cards or have to go to “compassion centers”? Why is it legislation on oxycodone has no signs of rapid or unpredictable alteration? The only reason reefer is illegal to begin with is racism, these dispensarys are much needed business for our area.

DAVID GOMEZ:
You guys do know that Attorney General Bill Schuette has long standing family ties to Dow Chemical right? The largest chemical company in the world who makes a ton of money from selling their chemicals to big pharma, the same big pharma who wants to government to tell you what you can put in your body so that you are forced to use their products to treat yourself.

It’s not even hard to find dirt on Schuette, I did a simple google search and found a story from 1990 about how when he was a MI rep Schuette voted in favor of some things that would directly benefit Dow, the Midland MI based corporation. He also had Dow stock that was valued around 1.2 million at the time. He’s a corporate chemical boy just like all of the other NEOCONS.

Schuette doesn’t give a F*** about the will of the people or protecting our neighborhoods, all he cares about maintaining the status quo and controlling people’s lives. Yes, lets continue the War on Drugs which targets mostly minorities and is turning the US into an authoritarian regime.

GLEN S
Now that they have eliminated unemployment, fixed our failing public schools, rebuilt our crumbling infrastructure, and reinvigorated our dying cities — it’s nice to see that Michigan’s “small government” Republicans finally have time to turn their attention to more pressing issues — including cracking down (or at least, attempting to restrict) the outcome of a law that voters passed by an overwhelming (2-to1) margin, and which passed in all 83 Michigan counties.

MARK MAYNARD:
I know I’m douchey about some stuff, and I guess this is one of those things. I’ve got tons of friends that smoke pot. I’ve also go tons of friends that drink too much. In both cases, I think they’d be more productive if they did less of it. But, like I said, I don’t think that it should be illegal. So, I guess I’m on your side. I just think that pot makes people lazy. Like I said, though, in the whole scheme of things I think it’s better for society than high fructose corn syrup, which makes people fat and stupid. Sorry if you find this insulting. It’s just what I think. That doesn’t change the fact that I believe it should be legal. Nor does it change the fact that I know many people who need pot for medical reasons. I just find it insulting when I see young people in Insane Clown Posse tshirts and sideways baseball caps going into these “medical” facilities to get their pot. I find it insulting to those in society who really do need it.

PETER LARSON:
For the record, I also hate pot. I mean, I hate pot in the same way I hate Air Supply, Clint Black, Insane Clown Posse and mayonnaise. I also hate people that go and get wasted all the time and drive home rather than take a taxi.

I also hate the tired claims of weed as some kind of miracle drug. At best, it’s a mild sedative and an anti-convulsant. Not to say that those things don’t help people, but weed will not cure HIV, it won’t cure cancer and won’t keep you from being depressed and generally feeling like a useless bag of dirt.

By the “medical marijuana” advocates’ arguments, we should all have poppy fields in our backyards and home-grown heroin refineries in our garages. Heroin also helps people with chronic pain, depression and a variety of other problems. Granted, heroin can kill you, though driving while smoking weed can also kill you.

I am for the legalization of weed, but I personally think that these conversations of it’s “medical” benefits are vastly overblown (very little true science backs up much of the claims you see on internet discussion boards) and are counterproductive toward developing responsible drug policy.

Mostly, I think that weed advocates are much like religious zealots and are too clouded by their own love for the bud to convince me of much.

That’s just my opinion.

Posted in Health, Michigan, Other, Uncategorized, Ypsilanti | Tagged Bill Schuette, David Gomez, Dow Chemical, Glen S, high-fructose corn syrup, lazy friends, lazy fucks, Mark offends a friend, medical marijuana, Pete Larson, posts where Mark comes across as an uncool douche, pot, Thom Elliott | 92 Comments

Looking at the Finland model for public education

By Mark | August 24, 2011

As you know, I’m not a big fan of the post-No Child Left Behind public education system we have here in America. I believe, as I’ve stated before on several occasions, that the American public school system, which was once the envy of the world, is being purposefully dismantled by wealthy individuals, and the politicians who do their bidding. I believe their primary objective is to keep more of their wealth, but I certainly don’t think they mind the fact that, as a result of these activities, they are creating a permanent under-class in America, easily manipulated, and willing to work for slave wages. I think destroying public education, in their eyes, is a classic “Win, Win.” It keeps people stupid, labor cheap, and more money in their pockets. The good news is, people are beginning to pay attention, and look for solutions. As we’ve discussed here in the past, one model getting a great deal of attention is that of the Finnish public education system, which, for the past several years, has been producing graduates much more proficient in math, sciences, and the languages than our American schools. The following clip comes from a recent Smithsonian magazine feature on what they’re doing in Finland, and what we might be able to learn from them. I encourage you to read it over, and, as you’re doing so, to keep in mind the recent situation in Detroit, where we’re talking about instituting 60-person classrooms, and closing down successful programs like the Catherine Ferguson Academy.

…There are no mandated standardized tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the end of students’ senior year in high school. There are no rankings, no comparisons or competition between students, schools or regions. Finland’s schools are publicly funded. The people in the government agencies running them, from national officials to local authorities, are educators, not business people, military leaders or career politicians. Every school has the same national goals and draws from the same pool of university-trained educators. The result is that a Finnish child has a good shot at getting the same quality education no matter whether he or she lives in a rural village or a university town. The differences between weakest and strongest students are the smallest in the world, according to the most recent survey by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “Equality is the most important word in Finnish education. All political parties on the right and left agree on this,” said Olli Luukkainen, president of Finland’s powerful teachers union.

Ninety-three percent of Finns graduate from academic or vocational high schools, 17.5 percentage points higher than the United States, and 66 percent go on to higher education, the highest rate in the European Union. Yet Finland spends about 30 percent less per student than the United States.

Not until sixth grade will kids have the option to sit for a district-wide exam, and then only if the classroom teacher agrees to participate. Most do, out of curiosity. Results are not publicized. Finnish educators have a hard time understanding the United States’ fascination with standardized tests. “Americans like all these bars and graphs and colored charts,” Louhivuori teased, as he rummaged through his closet looking for past years’ results. “Looks like we did better than average two years ago,” he said after he found the reports. “It’s nonsense. We know much more about the children than these tests can tell us.”

…In 1963, the Finnish Parlia-ment made the bold decision to choose public education as its best shot at economic recovery. “I call this the Big Dream of Finnish education,” said Sahlberg, whose upcoming book, Finnish Lessons, is scheduled for release in October. “It was simply the idea that every child would have a very good public school. If we want to be competitive, we need to educate everybody. It all came out of a need to survive.”

Practically speaking—and Finns are nothing if not practical—the decision meant that goal would not be allowed to dissipate into rhetoric. Lawmakers landed on a deceptively simple plan that formed the foundation for everything to come. Public schools would be organized into one system of comprehensive schools, or peruskoulu, for ages 7 through 16. Teachers from all over the nation contributed to a national curriculum that provided guidelines, not prescriptions. Besides Finnish and Swedish (the country’s second official language), children would learn a third language (English is a favorite) usually beginning at age 9. Resources were distributed equally. As the comprehensive schools improved, so did the upper secondary schools (grades 10 through 12). The second critical decision came in 1979, when reformers required that every teacher earn a fifth-year master’s degree in theory and practice at one of eight state universities—at state expense. From then on, teachers were effectively granted equal status with doctors and lawyers. Applicants began flooding teaching programs, not because the salaries were so high but because autonomy and respect made the job attractive. In 2010, some 6,600 applicants vied for 660 primary school training slots, according to Sahlberg. By the mid-1980s, a final set of initiatives shook the classrooms free from the last vestiges of top-down regulation. Control over policies shifted to town councils. The national curriculum was distilled into broad guidelines. National math goals for grades one through nine, for example, were reduced to a neat ten pages. Sifting and sorting children into so-called ability groupings was eliminated. All children—clever or less so—were to be taught in the same classrooms, with lots of special teacher help available to make sure no child really would be left behind. The inspectorate closed its doors in the early ’90s, turning accountability and inspection over to teachers and principals. “We have our own motivation to succeed because we love the work,” said Louhivuori. “Our incentives come from inside”…

[note: A Metafilter discussion on this Smithsonian article can be found here.]

Posted in Education, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged education reform, excessive testing, Finland, FInnish Lessons, Olli Luukkainen, Pasi Sahlberg, plutonomy, public education, tax the rich, teach to the test, the exploitation of the stupid, the growing gap between rich and poor, the plight of the overtaxed rich, threats to the middle class | 24 Comments

I apparently need to make a friend by October 5

By Mark | August 22, 2011

I just found out that Martin Scorsese’s made-for-cable documentary on the life of George Harrison is set to air in two parts, on October 5th and 6th. That gives me approximately 6 weeks to make a friend with HBO.

If you have HBO, and a comfortable couch, and can keep your mouth shut for a few hours at a time, please let me know. You may be eligible for a new a friend.

Posted in Art and Culture, Mark's Life | Tagged documentary film, George Harrison, Living in the Material World, Martin Scorsese, my favorite bands, people whom I respect, The Beatles | 13 Comments

Anton LaVey on enjoying the company of animatronic alcoholics

By Mark | August 21, 2011

A few days ago, I had a post here about a bar in Orlando that I went to with my family that was full of animatronic dinosaurs. Well, I mentioned at the end of that particular piece that I was concerned that, based upon this experience, my daughter might get the impression that bars were in fact happy, fun places, instead of the sad, pathetic hiding places for the unloveable which we all know them to be. And, somehow, in the process of conveying this thought, I compared animatronic dinosaurs to real life alcoholics… Anyway, that sparked a conversation in the comments section on animatronic alcoholics, like those found in Cheers-themed airport bars. So, with that in mind, I’d like to ask you a question that was posed in the thread.

Q: If you were to create an animatronic alcoholic for your bar, what would you have him/her say?

If I had just one, it would be a 65 year old man, and I would have him sob softly, occasionally saying things like, “They used to give you free goddamn peanuts here.”

Oh, and speaking of animatronic alcoholics, I learned from my friend Doug Skinner that Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, may have been the first to have experimented with them… There’s even video, if you can believe it.

LaVey says, among other things, that he prefers their company to that of his friends.

LaVey, for those of you who aren’t familiar with him, was also an accomplished musician, having played synthesizer, pipe organ and calliope on the carnival circuit, and in bars and burlesque houses for years before striking it rich with Satan. If you’re interested, you can here his work here, in a track from the album Satan Takes a Holiday, which was produced by our mutual friend Gregg Turkington.

[Speaking of famous Satanists, tonight’s post is dedicated to the West Memphis Three, who were just released from prison after 19 years, for three murders which they most likely had nothing to do with.]

Posted in Art and Culture, Other, Uncategorized | Tagged alcoholics, animatronic alcoholics, Anton LaVey, Church of Satan, Doug Skinner, Gregg Turkington, religion, robots, Satan Takes a Holiday | 22 Comments

Totally Quotable Clementine: learning the value of money edition

By Mark | August 21, 2011

Clementine learned a valuable lesson yesterday concerning the value of money. We’ve been working with her for years now on counting change, and trying to instill within her some appreciation for how much stuff costs, but it didn’t really sink in until last night, when it came time to settle up on her vacation purchases.

When we left for vacation, she had $87. Some of that was earned, though her $1/week allowance, but most of it was given to her by relatives in July, when she turned seven. We didn’t bring the money with us, but we told her that, if she wanted anything, over and above all of the stuff that we were getting for her, she’d have to buy it with her own money. And, between Disney World, and the Harry Potter area of the Universal Studios park, she spent most of it. She bought a magic wand for $30, a chocolate frog for $10, a box of Every Flavor Beans for another $10, and a kind of spray-bottle-like contraption with a battery powered fan on top used for misting one’s self for $17. We did our best to make it clear to her that she was essentially buying a stick for $30, and a what was pretty much a Windex bottle full of tap water for $17, but at some point we gave up, figuring that it was her money, and that, sooner or later, we had to let her experience buyer’s remorse firsthand. So, we let her spend her money on ear wax and vomit flavored jelly beans, and all the rest of it, and we went on about our vacation. And everything was fine until last night, when it came time to count out the money.

There’s something about taking a big wad of bills, and handing a vast majority of them over to someone else that’s inherently objectionable at a cellular level. Her reaction was both visceral, and completely understandable.

As I don’t want to embarrass Clementine, I won’t go into a great deal of detail, but let’s just say there were many tears shed, a lot of yelling, and more than a little finger pointing. (She accused me, as she tried to claw her money back out of my pocket, of not telling her that the wand cost $30, which I had done several times. I even remember telling her that, for the same amount of money, she could purchase a Harry Potter DVD back home, and a few pounds of candy at The Rocket. But she wasn’t in the mood for reasoned debate at the time, as she stood there, in Ollivander’s Wand Shop, repeating “levicorpus” and flicking her stick at me.) Maybe it makes me a terrible father, but, as she was standing there beside me, crying, and demanding her money back, I was thinking that it was probably a good thing, in that, finally, she might be beginning to appreciate that things in our society cost money, and, more importantly, that saving money can be a good thing. (Before, when I’d talk with her about stuff, like how we had to turn the lights off in the house when we weren’t using them, in order to save money (and energy), I didn’t get the sense that she really understood that money was finite, and that, when we made a choice to spend it in one way, it meant not being able to spend it elsewhere. But, I think that now, thanks to Disney, the concept might be a little less abstract.)

So, we spent our afternoon talking about money, and how much things cost. I told her how much we’d spent on airline tickets and hotels while we were gone, and tried to get her to share our outrage over the fact that small bottles of water cost $2.75 a piece at Disney World. (It was 95-degrees during our visit, and we went through several.) At some point, I remember walking into the living room, where Linette was talking with her, and hearing Linette say, “That’s what Disney is… it’s a machine built to cloud people’s judgement and take people’s money.” I felt like grabbing my little video camera, but didn’t want to ruin the family Disney-trashing moment.

And then we went though her purchases item by item, discussing whether, knowing what she knows now, she still would have still purchased them. We talked about her options, and I told her that, if she wanted to, we could put the wand on Ebay and see if maybe we could sell it. I explained, however, that it was unlikely that she could get back the full $30 that she’d spent on it. After an hour’s discussion, it became clear that she didn’t want to get rid of anything that she’d purchased – she just wanted her money back.

So, I don’t know that we totally sold her on our anti-consumerism agenda, but I think we may have made some headway. At least, next time she’s thinking about spending her money, I think she’ll take a moment or two to consider what else the money could be used for.

Oh, I should also mention that, somewhere in the process of discussing all of this, we decided to raise her allowance… not so that she could buy more, but so that she could have money of her own to save, and to give to local non-profits. It’s an idea that we stole from our friends Meg and Andy. They give their daughter $3 a week, with the stipulation that at lest $1 be saved, and $1 be given to charity. We’ve always thought that it was a brilliant idea, and now seemed like the perfect time to introduce the concept to her.

If you have other tips for how to instill good money management skills in kids, please leave a comment.